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I have a 160 GB hard drive and was wondering if there is a standard way to partition these drives or does anyone have any good suggestions on how I can stay well organized with this big mutha. I edit video, pictures, do school work and download video clips and 'other stuff'.
Thanks

There is no standard was of defining disk partitions. It is more up to you how you want your partitions.

You can use folder to do the house keeping that you want. I think that most people that use partitions are using it to keep their various sustem software separtate, (i.e. OS X, OS 9 and personal data). One advantage is, (if your system can boot os 9) if the os x partition is corrupted, you can still boot your system or you can boot say panther, or jaguar if they are on a separate partition.

The question a raises, you need to define partitions?

Just one note if your disk were to crash you would loss all of you partitions.

I am currently using a 20Gb disk that has three partitions: OS X which is defined at ~5GB, OS 9 at ~5GB and my data disk which is a little less than 10GB. I purchased iDVD and could not load it due to disk space limitations. I needed 1.2 GB on the OS X partition and I do not have it. So partitioning a disk can hurt you. I am looking at getting Panther. In which I may remove my partitions, to avoid this problem next time. I will not be loading iDVD now since it only will load if you have a superdrive installed, which I do not have

Now with that said. If you are planning to partition. You need to figure out how many partitions and the sizes of each. You said that you are going to do some video editting, photos, school stuff, video clips and other stuff. Right of f I would create a large partition for your video work. I have found that 60 minutes of video take about 12GB of disk space. If you are working on multiple video projects you will need a large work area separtate from the system disk (OS). Because of all of the stuff I have in my home folder I ran out of space on my OS partition. If you keep your data some place other than your system partition could be smaller (OS).

Looking at your situation, here is what comes to mind. I see four partions as follows: 120GB for video stuff; 10GB for you OS; and 2 15GB partitions for other stuff.

Thanks rman, Your sugestion sounds like it would fit me pretty well. I notice that pretty much everything defaults to documents (I am running Jaguar) Would documents fall under the OS partition. If so, all I would need to do after partitioning is to select which drive to save to correct?

Originally Posted by rman

Now with that said. If you are planning to partition. You need to figure out how many partitions and the sizes of each. You said that you are going to do some video editting, photos, school stuff, video clips and other stuff. Right of f I would create a large partition for your video work. I have found that 60 minutes of video take about 12GB of disk space. If you are working on multiple video projects you will need a large work area separtate from the system disk (OS). Because of all of the stuff I have in my home folder I ran out of space on my OS partition. If you keep your data some place other than your system partition could be smaller (OS).

Looking at your situation, here is what comes to mind. I see four partions as follows: 120GB for video stuff; 10GB for you OS; and 2 15GB partitions for other stuff.

peronally im not a fan of partitioning, don't see a use for it if you are running one OS... use folders to keep track of your files and catagorize them that way... if you partition your drive and want to expand one your out of luck till you reformat you whole disk. I have three HDs a 60gig( runs my os and apps) 40 gig (stores mp3's and audio media) and a 250gig( for digital editing and authoring). partitioning was originally designed for computers that could not support such large disks, by splitting them up then the system could reco the whole space. you don't need to to this with your mac so i would worry about partitioning. I would use folders and sub folders then create aliases on the desktop if you want. you could even copy the hard drive icon to the aliases and never know the difference. thats just my 2 cents. good luck